Yamaha's motorbike robot wants to beat Valentino Rossi

Yamaha has revealed its new humanoid motorcycle-riding robot at the Tokyo Motor Show. Its goal? To beat MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi.

Motobot is designed to approach riding "from a human rider's standpoint -- with no modifications made to the motorcycle itself". Yamaha said that, with the advantage of robotic specialisation, the end goal of Motobot was "to become capable of competing against Valentino Rossi's lap times around a racetrack".

Gallery: Yamaha's motorbike robot wants to beat Valentino Rossi

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The technologies developed in the process will be used in future product development and testing. That includes both the creation of safer and better performing motorbikes and the future development of other autonomous robots.

The way Motobot straddles an unmodified Yamaha YZF-R1M bike and blasts down the straight makes for an impressive sight, and its humanoid form means that it can accelerate and adjust its position on the track in an uncannily human manner.

Motobot has six actuators for steering, throttle, front brake, rear brake, clutch and gearshift pedal. Reacting to data from the bike's internal sensors, including speed, engine RPM and attitude, it steers the motorcycle and reacts to conditions on the track.

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Yamaha said that, in the future, it'll be incorporating additional sensors including high-precision GPS, as well as adding machine learning capabilities to allow Motobot to "make its own decisions regarding the best lines to take around a racetrack and the limits of the motorcycle’s performance, so that it can improve its lap times with successive laps of the track."

Starting from its 2015 goal of riding in a straight line at 100kph and learning to corner, by 2017 the team hopes to have it lap a racetrack at 200kph or more.

The company also plans to give Motobot the ability to ride other vehicles including snowmobiles and jetskis.